Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2962: The Best Kind Of Workout Programming For You Specifically !

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health fitness and entertainment podcast in history approaching over half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about customized workout programs.

We're doing them right now here at Mind Pump. This is the first time ever. you can get a Maps program that is yours, you individualize. Here's what you do. Go to my Mapsprogram.com. Fill out the questionnaire. And within one week, you get on the phone with a trainer who will deliver to you an individualized Maps program.

It's awesome. Go do it. Look, this episode is brought to by a sponsor, Ketone IQ. So one of the benefits of going on a ketogenic diet, this is a diet where you completely avoid carbohydrates like zero carbs. is your body starts to run on ketones. And people like this because they feel sharp. They have more energy, steady energy throughout the day.

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or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstor.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Maps, workout programs have been enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people, but we're the first people to tell you that although those programs are great, nothing is as good as a customized workout plan.

That's a fact. Look, we were trainers for 20 years. I could create the best workout for an individual far better than a general program ever could. That's why I'm so excited to talk about what we've done next. We're going to talk about individualized maps, workout programs. This is the first time in Mind Pump History. Let's go.

Justin, it puts you on the spot a little bit. Do you know how many total we have now? I believe it's 32. 32? Maps programs? Yeah. Wow. Let me tell you why this is so exciting for me because, first off, the reason why we have so many MAPs programs, one of the reasons, is because people are very different.

People have different goals, different fitness experience. You know, one program may be phenomenal for one person and may be absolutely horrible for another person, even if it's well written. It could cause injury or just be totally inappropriate for that individual. We'll add another layer to that at the time of their life, too. That's right. I mean, a program that's great for you and suitable for you at one period of your life versus post-kid or crazy new job or whatever, that completely changes. That's right. I mean, you could follow even a MAPS program, get great results, life circumstances change, and suddenly it doesn't work for you anymore.

You plateau or even go backwards. And so this was always a struggle for us, but how in the heck do you create hundreds of thousands of individualized? They scale that. Workout program is impossible. Well, the answer was always the podcast. The podcast was the, because I, no way any of us would have felt comfortable building a e-commerce business where we just peddled and sold workout programs without adding context to that. And the podcast always served as the conversation to help support people through that.

Because if you follow a maps program and you listen to the podcast. And you could start to figure some stuff out. Yeah, exactly. And you use the tools that we've provided for you and all the free. guides and content, you can start to take a Maps skeleton and customize and modify and kind of figure your way out through it. Originally, yeah, it was the Facebook forum. It was like the extension of that. And then it became our quas. And then, you know, we're trying to answer live, like, and troubleshoot our way through that. And now, you know, we get these callers coming in and

they'll tell us, you know, how everything's going. And we do follow-ups. Now we have trainers to actually, you know, back that up with us. So now this is like the very next step from that. That's the, that's the biggest thing. So, and, you know, the challenge has always been this, because we get callers that call in all the time. So every week, we have eight to 12 callers that'll call in, and we'll get on and we'll coach them. And they're fans of the show. They listen to us. And oftentimes, they pick the wrong maps program, oftentimes, or they don't modify it in the right way. And that's just because it's difficult to train yourself. It really is. Look, I've been doing this for years. I know I struggle with this because of my addictions to exercise and stuff like that. So oftentimes we have to move

them in a different direction. Then we do follow up with them and, you know, 60 days later, like, oh my God, my body is responding so well. So this was always a challenge for us. It's like, okay, can we deliver something like this? And here's the deal. No program that's written generally will ever be as effective as a good personal trainer. Period. End of story. We've never, never said anything different than that. We were trainers for years before we ever started the podcast. A good trainer, a good coach is worth their weight in gold. And there's no general program. There's no podcast.

There's no information online that will ever rival a good coach or a good trainer. It's just the best. Why? Because they can coach you. They can individualize thing for you. It's the best thing you could possibly do. And we didn't have coaches that worked for mind pump for years up until maybe, has it been two years now that we've had coaches? Super recent.

It took us a long time to get there because. anybody that represented us as a coach or personal trainer, we had a very high standard. They had to be really good. Nothing would make us more angry than having a coach represent us inaccurately or improperly. And so we just waited and waited and waited. Meanwhile, the podcast grew.

We had lots of demand. I'd say probably one of the most common emails we've ever gotten is, hey, can I hire one of you guys or do you have a trainer you can recommend? Because we speak so highly of good trainers and coaches. And we just never moved in that direction because we didn't feel comfortable. We didn't have the leadership team. We didn't have the, we didn't have it set up. Well, we do now.

And so it's been two years. We're building this incredible team. These trainers are coached and trained by us. We have a great leadership team. We trust them. We vouch for them. And so now what we want to do is we want to be able to offer individualized maps programs for the first time ever.

This is exciting, man. Where you can actually, instead of doing maps enabolic or maps aesthetic or mass performance, you know, it's MAPS John. Yeah. You know? It's a program with exercises that are best for you, with programming and volume that's best for you. And I, this is the most excited have been,

I haven't been this excited since MAPS enabolic, since the first program. I'm like reluctant about it because I don't want to get overly hyped about something until it's like all out and done. Also, I don't know what Justin's going to do with himself. I mean, all the programs shoot my feet up. Yeah, dude. This guy's going to be sipping on margaritas.

chilling on the Hawaii. I was getting a little antsy though. I'm like, what else can we put out? You know, and really it comes down to this. It's like, you know, how much more individualized can we get? And I think this is such a good direction for us to go with our programs because it's like, you know, the foundation of it is there. Like, if we just base it off of, you know, the general public, like, what are their interests?

Like, what are their goals? Like, what are the biggest problems that need to be solved? Like, I feel like we've done a pretty good job with our library of options. Well, the business has always been there. And to Sal's point, we've always known that that is the better way to do it, but impossible to serve. It was impossible to serve the volume that we had until we had over 30 personal training. You need a ton of trainers to look over like a questionnaire and personalize and meet with a client. And get on the phone with them.

Yeah, and go, okay, let me customize this for you. It's just impossible to do without a staff. and a team to do that. And there's no way the three of us we're going to be able to do that for our entire audience. So now that the team is built in order to do it,

which is awesome, exciting. Well, let's talk a little bit about why customization is so important. Okay, because if you listen to the show, we'll talk about certain exercises, having a lot of value, how to strength training properly,

general truths when it comes to working out that apply to most people. But when you boil it down to the individual, When you bring it down to one person. Look, I've trained enough people to know that all the rules are not hard rules. It's almost always it depends. I've trained people where, you know, the exercises we talk about that are awesome are not the exercises that are going to work for this person. Or how I apply strength training is not the right way to apply it for this person.

I mean, I'll give you a silly, just pop into my head a silly example. Strength training is phenomenal. It's a great way to complement any type of. exercise routine. I don't care what kind of athlete you are. Proper strength training is going to improve your performance, decrease your risk of injury, et cetera, et cetera. I remember the first time I trained a legit endurance athlete. I trained an Iron Man athlete. Have you guys ever trained yet? I know you have, Justin. You've had some, okay. I train an Iron Man athlete. So for people who aren't familiar, an Iron Man is basically the

crazy, one of the craziest things you could possibly do. You run a marathon. And then on top of that, you swim miles and you bike miles. It's just insane. And to prepare for an Iron Man means you do an incredible amount of training. So I had a client who did Iron Man's the first time I have this client. And he got referred to me by someone else who had spoke highly of me. So I get this guy to hire me to come in and he works and I'm working with him. And he's already doing tons of training.

Now he's super fit, obviously. He's obviously got good genetics. He competes in Iron Man's. This wasn't his first one. He's got his diet dialed in. Like, he's serious about this. This isn't like a weekend warrior. And he comes and he hires me.

And he's like, okay, what is my workout going to look like? And I'm like, okay, well, you're doing all this training. I think what we're going to do is two kind of full body workouts a week. And I'm going to train. That's it. Yeah. And he's like, is that all I'm going to do? I mean, yeah, yeah.

That's more than enough. We'll just do two full body workouts. And here's what happened. His performance declined. His performance started to decline. He was reporting. back to me his runs and his swims and his cycles and he's like I'm not and at first I'm like well you're just more fatigued we're got to add more let's see what happens and his performance kept dropping

and I had to come to term with the fact that my two days a week of 45 minutes of strength training with three to four minute rest periods was too much yeah and I had to scale it back scale it back scale it back here's what it ended up looking like four exercises once a week the other day a week I would just do mobility with them and then we saw performance improvements. But I had to individualize it so much. You have to work with them to get to that point. That's right. Now, off the top of my head, I could think of many programs. I think that would work. But as a trainer, I had to scale him back to some really extremely low volume of training at low intensity. Okay, let me add that. That once a week was at moderate intensity at most. And then the mobility we did,

we had to be very careful because of all the training he was doing. Only then do we see improvements in his athletic performance. Yeah, you're, I mean, that's an extreme. That's an extreme example. That's an extreme example that probably very few people listening right now can probably connect to. I'll give you examples and I have tons of clients that I trained that were like this and that that were with me for already years. And I know what their body can handle training wise and intensity wise, volume wise. And gets promoted from being a sales guy to a regional vice president of sales. And the job changes a little bit.

We are now flying all over the country, staying. the night in hotels, changing time zones, a little more stress. Now, a little more money, so I think life is good. I've been training this way for a long time. Same guy now no longer can handle the same volume and training or intensity. And now because we're sitting in these long flights and we're like now we've got this chronic hip pain and low back pain and we have these other issues. Like all of a sudden you take this exact, the same dude who didn't break his workout stride and kicking ass and doing well, but life changes that little bit with a per se. promotion or demotion depending on your thing or just an added job that you have to do to make ends meet,

whatever it may be. And now this guy has to completely modify and change the way we trained. Like training looked completely different that next year. But it took me as a young trainer. So it took me a while of beating my head against the wall, not realizing like, this doesn't make sense to me. Like, are you sure you're eating the macros I told you you? You're doing this. It's like, yeah, but my sleep is fucked. I'm sitting on a plane all day long. So my hips are crazy. now I'm worried about, I'm not just worried about my own personal numbers. I'm worried about 80 other sales guys numbers. So I got the stress of that and the pressures of making more,

but now I have numbers and targets to hit. So you've got these people that, you know, may not be able to connect to the crazy Iron Man, but it's like, oh, yeah, like I've had a lot of clients that just subtle changes like that. We talk a lot, too, about things like, you know, pregnancy. You get, I was just injuries too, yeah. For sure. I've had quite a few clients where it's like, you know,

And our entire plan, we had to readjust and totally, you know, come in with a completely new, fresh plan and prescription because the limitations and now the rehab process and then we have to work through the rehab process to now gain and regain range of motion and strength. And if you're going to do that right, you know, you really have to draw that up a lot longer than most people think. And so to be able to do that and to have a plan, you know, to on the fly be able to change that. Like it's crucial to work with a coach. How about this? Here's one that we don't ever talk about on the show. Client absolutely hates an exercise. It's a great exercise. It's one of the best extra.

They absolutely hate it. Fine. We're not going to do it. That's fine. Because here's a deal. Look, here's a deal. I can try to convince you why you should do certain things. But if you absolutely hate it, most important thing for me as a coach is to help you create a relationship with fitness where you want to do it. There's nothing more important than that. Because if you look at the data, losing weight isn't the hard thing. Getting fit isn't the hard thing. It's staying there. That's the hard thing.

And so if I'm having you do something you absolutely hate, I'm being irresponsible as a trainer. And so I would modify it to throw in those things that you enjoy. So I know you develop that relationship with it over time where you want to continue to do it. There's so many different variables in workout programming that can make the difference. There could be exercises that are swapped out. It could be how it's performed, sets and reps,

and time. It's not just what's ideal. It's also what fits in my lifestyle. Maybe ideal. Maybe the data shows that the perfect routine for you is three one hour workouts a week. But you're looking at me and you're saying, listen, I got this going on. I got that going. I got this one on. Can I just work out 20 minutes a day instead? I can't do three, three, one hour. There's no way it can make that work consistently. Is there a way to organize this so I could do 20, 20 minute workouts every single day? The answer is yes. We just customize it and change it so that it works for your body. I'd say probably the most common thing.

Like I could probably count on one hand how many clients I trained where I didn't have to modify or do some sort of mobility corrective work for random chronic pain stuff. I feel like you train enough people above 45, which was, you know, middle age, need to lose weight, probably working, you know, busy lifestyles. Almost all, if not all, have suffered from so sort of, sort of, chronic shoulder pain, neck pain, low back pain, knee pain, ankle, you name it. And yet still have, you know, I want to build muscle. I want to lose body fat.

You know, the MAPS andabolic type of a program appeals to me. So how do I run somebody through something that is a strength focused or aesthetic focused type of training protocol? But then also, I can't negate or not address the shoulder issues that they're having, too, because that's only going to exacerbate if I just ignore it and keep pushing through. And then that's where injury happens or other problems down. the kinetic chain. And so it's like, how do I modify a program to work around or fix that while also working towards our fitness goal? And generally speaking, there are situations where you're

going to include programming that you might not normally include. For example, pelvic floor exercises, vacuum exercises, this is where you draw in the midsection. Almost always, I'm going to include this with someone who's postpartum. Almost always. You take someone postpartum who just had a baby. So the musculature of the core had to stretch and atrophy some of it. Muscle recruitment patterns had to change to stabilize because you've got a baby inside of you. So hip flexors are now working differently. Obliques are working differently. Abbees are working differently. Things are working differently because you're shaped differently. Then you have a baby. Hey, cool, I'm going to go back to the gym. I'm cleared. Let me go do my crutches. Let me go do my oblique twist. Let me go do all these other

exercises. Your recruitment patterns are different. So what happens oftentimes with women is, They'll get back into shape, but they're like, why does my back hurt? Yeah. Why is it hurt? I'm doing these. I've done these before. Why do I have this pain? Why is this exercise feel the way it does?

Like, we got to work on recruitment patterns, getting them back to where they were before because the patterns that you have have now been turned on to a setting that says, I'm pregnant or that I have a baby inside of me. And they don't go back automatically unless you consciously strengthen and work on them in a particular way. And so that's where customization plays a big role, you know? Yeah, I've had so many clients where it's just like there's this idea of their abilities. And it was a decade ago that they're able to do these things. That's tough.

But it's still there, you know, and it's very alive and well. And I've had a few friends where, you know, I played sports with them. And it literally had been over a decade since they'd really like physically exerted themselves in certain directions. And, you know, inevitably there'd be an injury. And, you know, to be able to address that and really show them like, okay, So you have to take that amount of time into consideration that now we have to build our body back up to, you know, to be able to experience those abilities again. You definitely can. But you just have to approach it completely differently.

And like, you know, to have a coach kind of walk you through that process, really plan it out prescribe it specifically to use everything. I laugh because I connect so much. Just recently, I don't know where this will air in relation to the episode where we just talked recently about the pickleball and shit. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm guilty. Why I brought that up? Yeah. I'm so guilty.

By the way, I just got to preface this. These guys, I didn't show up to pickleball because I had something else to do, I think. But really, these guys are like, Sal, you got to come. You barely have to move because these guys know I won't like to. That's how we tried self-south. It's not so easy, dude. There's no athleticism. You're totally fine.

It's like a carnival game, which you always get at. And I'm like, ah, I can't make it. So these guys play pickleball. Anyway, I get texts from both these guys, Adam. He's like, I'm fried. I'm so hammered from him. I was so fried. My calves were done.

You know, in what it was to, you know, finishing what I was saying about what Justin said and why I laughed was because, you know, I did it. And in my head, and I was fine. But it's the recovery time afterwards and the stress of the body and the inflammation that I felt for the next like four days. And then also how difficult it is for me where I'm on this kick right now. I'm dialed in on my training and diet. And so the last thing I want to do is break my rhythm. of training hard in the gym, you know, just because I had a rough,

but I have to. Like, it'd be so counter, it'd be so counterproductive for me to when I'm that inflamed, that stress, that recovery that much, to go slam, you know, squats the next day. And in fact, what I needed to do was walk, maybe do some sauna time, infrared,

like, total recovery type shit. And it's just like, that's not what I want to do. So it's hard to, to wrap your own, I'm a coach. I know, and I know. And it's hard. Like, much less the average person, doesn't know how to do that on a week-to-week basis.

And so many clients may not have the crazy extreme Ironman or sales promotion job, but we'll have these periods of time in their life or the year where the stress is very... Rear, sleeps a lot less. Yeah, and then knowing how to modify and customize your program during these times, that's probably one of the most valuable things of having a coach take you through that process. So here's the challenge. And we speak to this all the time on the show, right? The challenge is this, that most people will judge the effectiveness of a workout besides results.

Obviously, results is one way to judge it, although I'll even say results are important, but also look at the time, energy, and commitment that required that you had to do to get those results. And is it sustainable? That's a whole other conversation. But people tend to look at workouts and they'll judge their effectiveness based on how hard they are. The workout was hard. I sweat like crazy I got sore

Therefore it was a good workout That's actually not a good indicator Of a good workout If that was Then the best workout Adam could do Is pickleball because he got sore doing it Right But he's looking for aesthetic changes

He knows pickleball is not going to make him look the best He's going to apply different kind of Exercise programming So that's the challenge Here's the part that I want to add to it The difference between a Okay workout program for you, okay?

A program that's okay for you versus one that's great for you in terms of results, in terms of effort that you need to put in and what comes out is light years. It's light years. Programming makes a huge difference in the kind of results you get. And here's what it feels like. And until you start to get to these really advanced levels, because at that point, things start to get a little different. But for the average person, good workout programming,

this is the kind of commenting that a good trainer will know that they're on the right track. a client will come to them and say, this is really weird. I don't know how my body is looking the way it is. I don't know why I'm improving the way I am. I don't feel like I'm trying that hard. And that's how you know you're moving things. I just had this conversation with my friend.

So I just started personal training again. I have one person that I personal train. Yeah. And he's always my, I think I need to go harder. I think, but I keep track of his weights on purpose because I show him and I say,

hey, you just added 30 pounds to your... Such a different conversation you have with your friends now? Yeah. Yeah. I have the same. And he's like, how am I getting stronger? I'm like,

because we're training the right way. Do things the right way. Yes, you've got to put effort, but the return is, it makes you feel like the effort you're putting in isn't enough. Because how am I getting these crazy results? That's what good programming does.

Bad programming feels like this, like you're spinning your wheels in the dirt. I'm going to the gym. I'm sweating. I'm getting sore. I had some results. Now I plateaued. What's going on?

I don't even look like I work out. How many times have you guys heard that? I want to look like the effort that I put in to my workouts. to get callers like that all the time. And what that is, bad, inappropriate workout programming for that individual. It's learning to work with your body. It's, and I've talked so many times on this podcast, why that's difficult because

that training like that for body composition change is so unique compared to almost anything else that we do in our life. Everything else we do in our life. Just go. The harder we go. The more we do of it, the more time we spend on it, the better you get at it, the more money you make from it, all these things that. reward us for that for our effort that we put in.

Fitness is not like that. Like it's there's science to it. And there's a, there's a perfect balance. There's an optimal amount of stress. There's an optimal amount of nutrition or lack thereof in order to get said goal. And so more of that or too extreme less of that does not make it any better. There is an optimal amount and learning how to do that.

I think of right now the advantage I have. So we have three weeks until we take off. to Cabo and I've got my my two buddies, you know one of them, one of our good friends. Yeah, yeah. And he's already like in really good shape. And he's like, and so we just to compete and have some fun, we're all like on our kick to get ready for Cabo. And then, of course, one of the things are like, well, I want access to whatever maps program. Absolutely you have access to every maps program you have. And, you know, if I have questions on, yeah, absolutely I'll help you with diet. So with that. But the important advantage I have

is the ability to modify on a week to week basis. So just like what just happened. Like, so I'm not, I'm not going in and asking their questions on their stress and their sleep and this and that. It's like, you got your maps program. Go figure it out, dog. So, yeah, yeah, you'll see the difference. They'll look good. They'll be all right. You know what I'm saying? They'll look all right for Cabo with the difference between them and me will be like, I've customized.

Yeah, I've customized my maps program. So here's what we did. So for the first time ever, what we've done is we've created a way to get your own customized maps workout program. So here's what you do. You go to my maps program.com. You fill out a questionnaire. Now, here's a deal.

A trainer. is going to put something together for you. A real trainer, a mind pump trainer is going to put something together for you. Customize your own Maps program. Okay, so it's not. Maps Anabolic, Maps Strong, Maps Aesthetic. It's Maps You.

It's 100% individualized for you. In seven days, you get on a call with a Mind Pump trainer. Give us time to put this together. So you go to MyMapsprogram.com. Fill out the questionnaire. Seven days later, you get on the phone with a Mind Pump coach

and they will send you set you up with your own individualized workout program. You can also find us on Instagram. If you love the show, go to Instagram, go to Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, maps' aesthetic, Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources. at Mind Pumpmedia.com.

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